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Halloween on Disney Magic - Eastern Caribbean - Oct 29 Nov 5

Sail Date:
October 2011

Destination:
Eastern Caribbean

Embarkation:
Port Canaveral

The cruise was supposed to go to the Western Caribbean, but due to Hurricane Rina the destination was changed to Eastern Caribbean (St. Maarten, Tortola, Castaway Cay). We were disappointed but it turned to work out great.

For Halloween, the ship had trick & treating and a costume party in the late afternoon, and Villains show in the evening.

Our kids loved the clubs. Our daughter was at The Edge which is for 11-13. She hung out there but once she made some friends, they ended up hanging out around the ship. Our son was in the Oceanier Lab and sometime the Oceanier Club - tons of activities - lots of computers which was not always good because he may have spent too much time on those.

Fitness center is small but had plenty of treadmills, bikes and ellipticals. Had some weight machines and dumbbells. There were some classes of about 8 people held in a small open area.

I tried a Men's Shave at the spa. It was not worth the money. They used a standard More
razor (instead of a blade) and it irritated my skin.

Food was good. Our server and assistant server were excellent. Rotated each night through 3 dining rooms. We shared our table the whole week with another family of four with kids about the same ages - we got along with them real well and the kids hung out with each other. All soft drinks are free on the cruise and private island.

Entertainment was very good, but if you don't like Disney then you may not like it. There were 4-5 Disney-themed shows throughout the week which were all good. They brought on 4 entertainers that were all good - each one did a family show in the evening and then an adult show at night. They had Mickey Mania game show and Who Wants to Be A Mousketeer game show which were fun for families. There were 3 other adult club/bar/lounge areas but the best that I could tell was that not many adults actually used them at late night (after 11pm). The Diversions sports pub had many TV's but could only show 2 different sports games at one time - not good on College Football Saturday when a diverse group may want to see 3-4 games.

The third port was Disney's Private Island Castaway Cay. Excellent. Good snorkeling for novices. A couple floating play areas for the kids. Bike path around the island. Rent boats. Parasail. Kids club on the island so adults could go to there own beach area for quiet time. Very nice beach. Lunch is served on the island. We weren't able to disembark from the ship until 11:30am and they closed the lagoon at 4:30pm so we would have liked a little more time. They even closed down the gift shops 45 minutes before it was time to get onto the ship - they were pushing people out of the shops who were willing to spend money.

Disney Magic has 2 cordless phones in addition to 1 stationary phone for each room that work across the entire ship. You can call your room, the other cordless phone, or other guest phones. You can also text other phones and Disney sends text messages to the phones for some specific notifications (i.e. time the kid's club closes if your child is there). The kids clubs use these if your children want to contact you. Convenient. Less

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Cabin review: Disney Magic

Couch with small coffee table on side wall. Makeup mirror with a bench.
Double bed on the inside wall, single bed (out of couch), and bunk bed above.
Flat screen TV with ESPN, a couple news channels, cartoon channels, Disney promos and several recent movie channels.
Closet with a safety box and small shoe shelf. Fair amount of drawer and cabinet space.
Some noise of creaking when the boat rocks and maybe a little engine noise, but nothing too bad.
Disney Magic has 2 cordless phones plus 1 stationary phone for each room that work across the entire ship. You can call your room, the other cordless phone, or other guest phones. You can also text other phones and Disney sends text messages to the phones for some specific notifications (i.e. time the kid's club closes if your child is there). The kids clubs use these if your children want to contact you. Convenient.

Port and Shore Excursions

Rented a Jeep for the day right at the port for $45 for the day which included all fees and taxes. As you walk out of the pier, there is a small building with 4-5 rental car agencies off to the right. They were all fighting for our business. All except Hertz are no-name agencies. I spoke to 2 of the no-name agencies and negotiated the deal. The jeep was a few years old, had some nicks on it, but it worked fine. Since taxi's are $6-7 per person, renting the jeep was actually less expensive depending on the number of people and number of destinations. Make sure you see the jeep before giving them any payment. They swiped a blueprint of my credit card but wanted me to pay cash when I returned the Jeep.
We did not have a detailed map and actually got lost a little bit, but that was fine. We first went to a nice small beach on a bay that was past the butterfly farm. We then drove around to Marigot (French side) and climbed to the top of the Fort Louis. We had lunch at a restaurant down below. There was a small flea market close by.
We continued to drive around the island back to Philipsburg and spent a little time at the beach before returning the car.

Took the excursion to The Baths of Virgin Gorda. Virgin Gorda is another island that is about a 30-minute ride on a speed-boat ferry. Beautiful island. Big open-air Jeeps took the groups to The Baths. The Baths is a unique area of geological formations of large granite rocks that have been eroded by the sea. Small pools are formed between the rocks. There are caves that you walk through from "The Baths" to reach Devil's Bay which is a very nice, small beach area. The only negative of the excursion was there was not alot of time to enjoy the area - an additional hour would have made it perfect.